Watchers of the Throne: The Regent’s Shadow by Chris Wraight

Author:Chris Wraight
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2020-01-23T09:35:23+00:00

Aleya

I looked at the body of the saboteur, and half-wished I could strike it again.

She lay face up on the slab in the apothecarion, her pale skin lit harshly by overhead lumen-banks. I saw how bony she was, how the skin stretched tight over inadequate muscle. She had tattoos on her arms and neck – symbols of the Fellowship. Her face was heavily bruised. I did not regret being the architect of that.

Asurma was with me, as were six of the Citadel’s command, all of them Sisters of the order. The chamber was locked, and no menials had been suffered to remain present during the examination.

They were screened, Asurma signed.

The Sister-Commander had taken the attack hard. She had been distracted with me since my return, possibly seeing my flight to the relay station as a rash act, although she could not deny that it had given us valuable intelligence, nor that my actions in the control tower had prevented things being very much worse.

They were, I signed back.

I leaned closer to the body, narrowing my eyes, studying the proportions of the cadaver. Something had been bothering me ever since the Citadel had been secured and the final alarms had been cleared. In part, it was Telam that bothered me. I had never been kind to him. I had suspected him from the start, even though he had never been anything other than faithful. If it had not been for his trust in me, we might all be dead.

She would be thinner, I signed, looking up at Asurma. If she had lived here her whole life.

Luna’s terraformic generators were far from perfect – we all knew this. The slight reduction in gravitation was what gave the Fellowship – and all residents of the moon – their almost eerie slenderness. The woman before us was a decent attempt to mimic the effect, but it was not quite right. She was slim, though not, I thought, slim in exactly the right way.

Asurma was not convinced.

Where from, then?

I did not know. It occurred to me just then that I was trying too hard. My gnawing sense of guilt over Telam might be leading me to look beyond the obvious.

So I signed nothing, and just watched the blades do their work.

After some time, the dissection ended, leaving us not much closer to understanding than at the start of it. Asurma informed us of her plans for reviewing security. The Citadel had survived almost fully intact. Aside from the damage to the landing stages, which was catastrophic, the bulk of our operations would be able to continue as before. Letters of protest would be sent to the Adeptus Terra, complaining again of the lack of resources sequestered for our defence and demanding an investigation. More of our number would be diverted from training duties in order to serve as guards – something that Asurma had been loath to do before, given the enormous demands placed on us to provide new novices for the Imperium. The remaining Fellowship menials would be screened again, then again, questioned for sedition.

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